CHAPTER XXIV.
The order given by Adéonne to her femme de chambre had been so scrupulously observed that up to ten o’clock on the ensuing morning nobody had succeeded in gaining admittance to the boudoir of the comédienne.
Silence and obscurity reigned in the apartment. Long after the sun had risen, one might have supposed that the night continued, but for the gleams of light that came through the slight apertures between the curtains of the windows.
At length, Adéonne, in the same attire she had worn on the previous evening, opened, with extreme caution, the door which led from her chamber to the saloon. She paused at each creak of the lock. Closing the door with the same care, she traversed, with the lightness of a sylph, the two rooms which separated her boudoir from the dining-room. She advanced so noiselessly that her femme de chambre, who was writing to her lover,—a dragoon of the third regiment,—did not hear her approach.
“What are you doing there, Jenny?” inquired Adéonne, in a low voice.
“Madame may see for herself,” replied the girl, quite embarrassed. “I am writing to my cousin.”
“To your lover. What does he do?”
“He is a soldier. We are going to be married.”
“Why does he not come to see you?”